LOL - I can sympathize as well
Newbie: Tactics Trainer frustrating
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You can use the tactics trainer in untimed mode, but it won't be rated. The advantage to using it in rated mode is that the problem level will customize itself to your level.
If solving a problem in 7 seconds causes your rating to go down it's because the move you were supposed to find is typically found in less than 7 seconds by someone of your tactics rating. It's hard to tell without all the information, but most likely it wouldn't hurt you to practice seeing these kinds of things quickly.
The more difficult tactical problems will require you to see many of these simpler ideas and if you can't see them very quickly, you'll never solve the harder problems. So, you gottta build from the ground up.
Jul 28, 2008
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#4
also, you can go to your tactics settings and turn off the timer bar - that should be less stressful :)
Sep 1, 2008
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#5
Loomis wrote:
If solving a problem in 7 seconds causes your rating to go down it's because the move you were supposed to find is typically found in less than 7 seconds by someone of your tactics rating. It's hard to tell without all the information, but most likely it wouldn't hurt you to practice seeing these kinds of things quickly.
There's a fallacy here. The timing appears to be based on the average time of a solution among those who got it right. I know that my "rating" improved when I changed my tactics a bit. Instead of looking at the Chess board, I first look at the timing bar. If I see 26 seconds or so, I know this must be a quick one. I snag the first good move I see. Sometimes it's the right move. Sometimes it's not.
IN cases like that, when I make the right move, I generally make it very quickly, because I've guessed quickly. That drives the time requirement downward. When I guess wrong, the time requirement is unchanged.
See how the mechanism drives an artificially fast "average time"?
For me, the tactics trainer is seeming quite artificial now. I'm using the information from the timing bar as a hint to my answer.
Sep 14, 2008
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#6
After further review, I've decided the tactics trainer is pretty near worthless as a training device. When I look around to try and find the best move, my rating drops as I run out of time. If I see what appears to be a good move, I glance at the clock, and if time is short, I make the move. That isn't really training at all. At best, it's a tactics tester.
Meadmaker wrote:
After further review, I've decided the tactics trainer is pretty near worthless as a training device. When I look around to try and find the best move, my rating drops as I run out of time. If I see what appears to be a good move, I glance at the clock, and if time is short, I make the move. That isn't really training at all. At best, it's a tactics tester.
Is the Tactics Trainer perfect? No, nothing is. But it's certainly not worthless. Tactics Trainer composes probably > 90% of my non-playing chess "education" and I've moved up to 1600+ here on Online Chess based on that. Surely the rating is overinflated, but it's clear that I've improved a bit. I have TT to thank for that.
Hi - unabashed newbie here, just getting to know the game.
I find it very frustrating that I can correctly solve a puzzle in the Tactics Trainer in under 7 seconds and still lose 50 points. I guess I shouldn't care about the points, and think about the problems carefully, but the timers and the points and the ticking clock, it's enough to make you crazy. Is there some kind of "I don't really feel like I need to play speed chess" mode, so that I can actually learn something, rather than feeling the need to push the first piece that makes any sense around?
Jeremy